Gregg Olsen - Fear Collector

“Don’t get me wrong,” Emma said, “I love coffee, too. But I’d rather be home with her. She’s pretty strong about me needing to get out and be with people my own age. So here I am.”

She’s so pretty, he’d thought. So sweet. She was also sexy in the way that some girls are when they don’t even know it. Oliver was hooked. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

And then that night he’d finally asked her. Finally. After all the practice. After telling almost everyone who worked there that he was interested in Emma, he did it. And it was a big, fat flop.

He balled up a fist and punched it into the cushion of the old sofa.

Dammit. Damn her! Why hadn’t she seen that he was special, so very special? Why hadn’t she said yes? He was Spiderman! She was his Mary Jane! He was Superman! She was his Lois Lane. He couldn’t remember the Green Lantern’s love interest. Emma was right. It had been a terrible movie.

She was always so right. Why hadn’t she seen that he was perfect for her?

He looked down to the coffee table, where he’d set the photo he’d taken from the employee bulletin board when Emma was recognized as barista of the month. She was so beautiful in her crisp white blouse and perfectly pressed green apron. So sweet. She was always nice to him, listening with keen interest to whatever it was that he’d finally summoned the courage to tell her about.

Boyfriend or not, Oliver Angstrom was utterly determined to make her fall in love with him. He’d do whatever it took. He would not, he told himself over and over, be denied. Batman needed his Catwoman. Oliver needed his Emma. He turned up the volume on the TV as his favorite part of the Texas Chainsaw reunion came onto the screen. The roar of the saw. The scream of the girl cowering in the basement of the abandoned house.

Oliver stayed glued to the screen. Leatherface was in love. He was willing, ready and able to do whatever he needed to do go get the girl. Oliver wasn’t violent like that at all. Not really. Even so he admired the character central to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a tormented figure who was willing to do anything to get the girl.

He wanted to think of himself just like that. Without the power saw, of course. Oliver Angstrom wanted nothing more than to possess Emma Rose. He wanted nothing more than to take her out on a date. Kiss her. Tell her that she understood him like no other. The only problem with all that he’d planned was that she’d said no. She’d said she already had a boyfriend.

He doubted that and that hurt him as much as her answer. She didn’t even think that he’d be able to find out that there was no boyfriend. It was like he was nothing to her. Not even worthy of the truth. He’d never rejected anyone before, but if he did, he’d never lie. The only good thing about the fact that she’d lied was that there was no boyfriend. There was no one else in the way.

The only thing about him that didn’t interest her seemed to be.. him. But he could change. He could make her love him if only he knew just what in the world that was. He took another draw on the joint he was smoking, held it, and then blew the smoke out the open window. He took a seat on the sofa and plotted just how he’d make her fall in love with him.

“What are you doing down there?” his mother called from the upstairs doorway.

“Nothing! Leave me alone, Mom.”

“There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

“Who’s that?”

“The police. That’s who!”

Oliver jumped up from the ratty old sofa and prayed to God that he didn’t smell like a grow operation just then. The police? That can’t be good.

Grace Alexander and Paul Bateman were standing in the Angstroms’ living room when Oliver emerged from his basement lair, rubbing his eyes a little and hoping against hope that the police didn’t think they were too red.

Shana Angstrom, a large woman with room-filling hair and a rope of gold around her neck, introduced her son, while Clark Angstrom, a stump of a man with twitchy eyes, just stood mute.

“Ollie,” she said, in her nails-on-chalkboard voice, “there might be some trouble and you can help out.”

Oliver blinked hard. “I don’t know anything about Emma.”

Grace nodded, a little surprised that the young man standing in front of her in a T-shirt and jeans and smelling of bong water had immediately invoked the missing girl’s name.

“What do you know about her?” Paul asked.

Clark Angstrom seemed to fade into the background while his wife directed the group to the living room, where they could talk “more comfortably.”

“Clark,” she said, “be helpful, will you? Offer them a drink.”

“No,” Paul said. “We’re fine. Thank you.”

“Ollie,” Shanna Angstrom said, “sit up and answer their questions. These are busy people and they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t of some importance. Right, Detectives?”

Oliver Angstrom, it seemed, didn’t have it easy.

“Work called and told me Emma’s missing. That’s all I know.”

“Really? You don’t know where she is?” Paul asked.

He shook his head and slumped low in to the sofa next to his father. “I don’t know her that well,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I asked her out, but we just didn’t click that way.”

“What way is that, Oliver?” Grace asked.

Oliver glanced at his parents, his mother, now seated on his other side. “Hook up,” he said, sheepishly. “We didn’t hook up. She was cool and all, but we just didn’t, you know, hook up like…”

“Like what?” Paul asked. “Like how you wanted to?”

Oliver didn’t say anything.

Shana got up and started for the kitchen. “Would you like a beer?”

“No,” Paul said. “No thanks. We’re working.”

“I’ll take a water,” Grace said, more to be polite than anything. “Let me help you.”

She followed her into the kitchen and Shana fished a couple of glasses from the cupboard.

“Your son seems like a nice boy,” Grace said.

Oliver’s mother smiled nervously. “Oh, he is. I mean, I wish he’d get a real job. Trying to make video games all day and night.”

“Really? That’s cool,” Grace said, almost choking on the word “cool.” She considered video games the scourge of a generation of young people. Sure, they had stellar reflexes from working the controls with faster than lightning speed, but many were almost handicapped-incapable of dealing with humans. Oliver, she noted, almost never made direct eye contact.

“Is he working on a new game now?”

“I think so. He’s always hanging around in the basement. Maybe he’ll show you around. Probably a pigsty, but that’s the way kids are. No respect for what their parents do for them day in and day out.”

Grace took the water and returned to the living room.

“Oliver, your mom was telling me about the video games you’re producing. I’d love to see what you’re working on. I’ve always loved video games. I think of them as the art form of a generation.”

Oliver brightened slightly. At least he seemed to.

“Me, too.”

Grace set down her glass. “Do you mind showing me where you work on your latest? I have a nephew who wants to be a game developer. He’s just a kid, but I think I’d earn some cred if I said I saw what someone with his same dreams was actually doing.”

“Sure. Messy down there, but I’ll show you.”

Grace followed Oliver down the stairs, while Paul remained with his parents.

The basement was dark and smelly. The couch in front of the TV was a thrift market reject.

“This is a great space. Really private,” she said.

“Thanks.” Oliver looked over at the door to his grow room. Grace followed his gaze.